Efficient Blogging

Our Fearless Leader recently encouraged The Twelve Bloggers of Bcc to step up and blog a bit more. So I’ll pitch in by sharing my patented “3 Paragraph System” for pasting together a friendly blog post in ten minutes or less. Para. 1: “There’s a short article over at Site X talking about this interesting new idea blah blah blah.” Para. 2: “Which makes me think of this clever idea, blah blah blah.” Para. 3: “So there you have it: Might work, might not. What do you think?” Let’s give it a whirl on the story of the week.

[1] There’s a nice group of articles over at the LDS.org Newsroom on the new Manhattan temple, with some nice photos too. Early stories I read made it sound like several floors of an existing building would be refurbished and dedicated as a temple; this story and photos make it clear that the new temple is a free-standing six-story building. It even has an address: 125 Columbus Avenue, New York, NY, 10023. I suppose they all have addresses, but New York is the only place you would actually need an address to find it.

[2] Now that the Church is broadening the idea of “sacred space,” new possibilities beckon. How about a floating temple? Remodel a cruise ship (and paint it white) to bring a temple to all those island-bound Saints in the Pacific. And senior citizens could book temple cruises–an AM session, shuffleboard, body massage, PM session, then dinner with the captain. Make the tickets affordable and this might be the most popular temple in the Church! And, come to think of it, those Disney cruise ships are chronically underbooked. It doesn’t take Mitt Romney to see the possibilities here.

[3] So there you are: From landmark temples to mini-temples to urban temples to . . . mobile temples? Or maybe you have a better idea for the next cycle of temple innovation.

I think they should bring back the Tabernacle — it was essentially a port-O-Temple. Think of it — some travelling seventies, with a really great mobile home, taking the temple to the people. This could be a new folk movement!

It’s my understanding (verified on the LDS newsroom page linked) that 1) the building was there and they remodeled it to use as a temple (i.e. Vernal, Copenhagen DK) AND 2) that the temple is not the only thing in the building. (i.e. Hong Kong) It’s a 6-story building – some of the other stories have Sunday-use chapels and offices in them.

My DH served his mission in New York and just phoned to make sure it was still OK for him to go to the open house, then to Boston to take in an Orioles/Red Sox game. He’s always wanted to see Fenway, and he’s always enjoyed visiting the old Mission Office when he goes to New York. Now, it’s going to be a temple! How cool is that…

In any case, I’ve been out of work for six months, and money is tight, but this is important to him, so we’re making it happen. But if any of you Evil Eastern Mormons are willing to let him camp in your spare room for a night in Boston or New York, PM me at the e-mail address here. I will e-mail you his particulars (he’s a biologist teaching at a local HBC, with interests in concerted evolution of DNA in unisexual vertebrates, baseball, and church history). He doesn’t know I’m asking this and will probably be pretty annoyed about it.

Quite correct, the building has been there for decades. (And there used to be commercial space on the ground floor.) I both took a tour and crashed a service a long time back. I understand that the Manhattan wards will continue meeting on some floors.

Sunstone once ran a Bagley or Grondahl cartoon with a Temple-on-Wheels (I think the temple was being towed by a semi-). Then there was that other comic with a temple subleasing a space in the mall — just like it was Waldenbooks.

If the Church ever wants to really increase temple attendance, it can always pursue these options.

They actually live in Salt Lake and work in the temple there. They’ll be on their mission full-time for 18 months, so I guess it’s not your average temple mission. They should be living it up compared to their last mission — in a trailer home on an Indian reservation in South Dakota (they don’t seem to mention that possibility during talks asking for couple missionaries).

My brother also lives in Manhattan, but he’s still trying to decide if the city is big enough for all of them.